


Justify the Means

by NervousAsexual



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Post-Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Suicide, post-Half-Life 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21737131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Relationships: Barney Calhoun & Alyx Vance, Barney Calhoun & Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	Justify the Means

Alyx swore she was going to get revenge for him. "Someone killed him," she said. "Somebody set him up." She was so, so sure.

As far as she was concerned everyone she wasn't on a first name basis with was a suspect. Every rebel in a civilian jumpsuit was a potential turncoat, every medic a possible saboteur. She insisted that it would have been somebody he trusted. Barney wouldn't have let a metrocop get the drop on him, and he wouldn't have given up without a fight. She was so sure in her conviction that for a moment Gordon could almost forget that the real culprit was much closer to home.

Her explanation was comforting in a way, but it didn't change the truth. No matter who was responsible, Barney was still gone. No matter what they did they couldn't save him.

They'd seen the gun first, lying on the dusty attic floor, and then his hand beside it. If he'd uncurled his fingers he would have reached it easily--that must have been what set Alyx on a quest for vengeance, the idea that he'd reached for his pistol, tried to defend himself, and died in fear of what was coming.

There had been blood, lots of blood, but at first no obvious wound. It had been a clean shot to the base of his jaw. The bullet was still inside him. It had been fast, Gordon thought. He would have been dead within minutes.

Alyx ran to him first and tried to bring him around, get him on his feet, get him out of there, and Gordon understood. No matter how much blood he'd lost they would always regret it if they didn't try.

Barney had been so heavy, dead weight, almost impossible to pick up in that thick CP armor, but they couldn't just leave him there. He half-carried, half-dragged him to the vortigaunts. _Look,_ he said, showing them the antlion pheromones. It would be fast, much faster than it had been with Alyx. If they pointed him to the nearest den it would be so easy to get a handful of extract...

It would would not work, the vortigaunts told him gently. Extract had pulled Alyx back from the brink of death, but she had been still clinging to life to the last possible moment. Barney was dead. There was no life left in him to preserve.

His face and neck burned, not with embarrassment so much as despair. There was nothing he could do. There was no magic potion and the man in the blue suit wasn't coming.

"The Freeman grieves the Cal-Oon," the vortigaunts observed. It was true. He was not the only one.

Back at White Forest he fought with the buckles and buttons on the CP armor Barney still wore and washed the blood off his body. Without the blood he could have been sleeping. It broke his heart and brought him peace at the same time.

"We'll find out who did this," Alyx told him. "And I'll make sure they don't get to do it again."

She hadn't seen him up on that rooftop during the siege. Gordon had. He'd seen for himself that all those years of serving the resistance from the inside of the Combine had caught up to him and hard.

Barney had taken a sniper shot to the upper arm, though the armor kept that wound fairly superficial, and he'd been pinned down up there for who knew how long with no ammo and a case of pipe bombs just out of reach. Gordon was still mostly alert and well-stocked. He had little trouble taking out the snipers--it was only a matter of using the gravity gun to throw the pipe bombs hard enough that accuracy didn't matter. When the buildings were finally silent and he was confident they were safe he made his way across the rickety boards to Barney's hiding spot, and then Barney fell apart in his arms.

He smelled like ash and sweat and gunsmoke and he shuddered and shook and cried until he gagged. Gordon just held onto him. What else could he have done? He'd been through more than almost anyone.

As he cried Barney made him understand that he had no more right to be alive than any other metrocop. He didn't give names or numbers or details but it was obvious Barney remembered every single life he'd taken in CP. He'd killed rebels, civilians, vortigaunts; he'd hurt everyone he was asked to hurt. That was the price his insider info carried, and the blood, he felt, was solely on his hands.

For a long time he held Barney, and it occurred to him that he didn't really know the man in his arms. The man he'd known at Black Mesa was twenty years dead. The man in his arms was older, wearier, hurting beyond belief. There was nothing Gordon could do to take away the last two decades.

 _I'm sorry_ , he signed to Barney when he saw the body on the floor of the attic. His apology wouldn't bring back Barney and it didn't make the grief any easier. But it was the truth. He was sorry. He was so very, very sorry.

Alyx promised everyone who would listen that she'd kill the one who'd done this, but that man was already dead. He'd put the gun to his head and faced death with eyes wide open. Gordon had closed those unseeing eyes himself.

 _He's not in pain anymore_ , he tried to tell Alyx.

"He wouldn't have killed himself," she replied. "He knew how important he was to the resistance. He knew." She sounded certain but the question was there in her eyes. "He did know, didn't he?" she was asking.

Gordon wasn't sure. Part of him was sure he must have--why else would he have stayed in Civil Protection when it was everything he despised? Wouldn't he have left if he thought the information he was gathering wasn't worth it?--but another part was sure that it didn't matter. He'd known the job needed to be done and did it. That didn't undo the damage he'd done. Gordon understood. He did not agree and would never agree that this made him as bad as the other metrocops, but he did understand. Barney had avenged the lives he had taken in the one way he knew how.

Neither of them were to blame, Gordon reminded himself. Even when he'd tried to show Barney that what he'd done had ultimately saved lives, twenty years of unending trauma had been too much to overcome.

"He didn't deserve this," Alyx said, and on that they were agreed. They buried Barney in the same navy jumpsuit as the other resistance casualties. It was true that he put the gun to his head, but--and Gordon would stand by this to his dying day--it was the Combine that killed him, as surely as if he'd died on the battlefield.


End file.
